The CD8x ranks as the most detailed CD player
I’ve ever heard. Its detail reproduction
extends across the frequency range with no
frequency group favored. High frequencies
trail off believably; there is no sense of
being 6 feet 6 inches tall in a room with a
7-foot ceiling. There is an exceptional
freedom from opacity. The CD8x makes no
attempt to artificially sweeten the sound;
there is no dumbing-down of the signal.
Separation of individual instrumental lines is
truly excellent, as is the intelligibility of
lyrics. Some mumbled and buried-in-the-mix
lyric phrases on older Rock records that had
me stumped for 30 years were finally made
understandable. The broad sweep and larger
gestures of music are clearly laid out:
large-signal bass punch and control are deeply
satisfying.

The exceptional separation of individual lines
is supported and enhanced by the CD8x’s
equally exceptional portrayal of soundstage
width. Individual instruments are laid out in
an unusually wide spread. Particularly with
near-field listening, there is a perception of
the sound field being wider than the listening
room. On some recordings, the outside edges of
the stage wrap around into the room, partly
immersing the listener into the ambience of
the recording. This effect can be very
intoxicating; to those who have never
experienced it, it can even seem aberrant.
Depth of field is also superb: visually
oriented listeners will revel in the CD8x’s
ability to project a vivid and 3-dimensional
stereo hallucination.

Isolation from environmental interference
proved the decisive factor in determining the
Cyrus’ ultimate performance. This
characteristic of source components is so
common that it almost doesn’t warrant
mentioning. Still, owners of the CD8x/PSX-R
should be aware that cavalier placement of the
products will only hint at their true
performance potential. I am an avid and
long-standing member of The Society for
Putting Things on Top of Other Things: I view
isolation products as the foundation of a
system, as essential to musical performance as
suspension, wheels and tires are to the
performance of a sports car. Consequently each
component of my reference system is isolated –
from source to loudspeakers. The performance
of a component without effective isolation is
so often such a pale shadow of what is capable
of when isolated that I now ignore any
perception of gear played neat. The
outstanding increase in the effectiveness of
state-of-the-art isolation products during the
last 5 years has led to a major paradigm
shift, one that the larger audio industry has
been slow to incorporate successfully as an
organic concept. This paradigm shift holds
that effective isolation and control of
resonances is at least as important as the
quality of the circuit design. In many cases,
it can be more important.

I ran the CD8x and PSX-R with a wide gamut of
isolation devices, ranging from the
pocket-change cheap Vibrapods and Vibracones,
through various elastomer feet, air-bearing
platforms, and ball-bearing based isolators in
ascending order of effect. The best isolation
products produce at least one signature common
effect: wholesale improvement in eliminating
the slurring and blurring of low-level detail
and dynamics – an enormous increase in
‘footroom’ (to borrow DNM’s Denis Morecroft’s
term) - that is to say, high resolution of the
area where sound and music begin and end.
Given the CD format’s notoriously atrocious
fidelity to low-level signals, it’s not
surprising that not blurring low-level
information yields enormous gains.

Playing the Cyrus 8x and PSX-R with my
reference Stillpoints Universal Resonance
Dampers completely altered my perception of
the musical performance of the two components.
I was not surprised to find that the outboard
power supply benefited as much as the actual
player, having heard the improvement gained in
isolating outboard supplies in the past.

Improvement
in timbre was significant. Difficulty in
reproducing the sonic signature of orchestral
instruments has always been one of my primary
criticisms of the CD format. My simple Reality
Test – Does that really sound like a violin,
viola, clarinet, oboe, cello? - which garnered
only fair (but typical for CD) results without
isolation, improved markedly with the
Stillpoints. I was now able to concentrate on
what the instrument was playing without
wasting perceptual energy trying to identify
the instrument. Hugh Bean’s transcendent
violin playing on Vaughan Williams’ A Lark
Ascending at last revealed itself. It was
the same with other orchestral instruments.
High frequency percussion instruments were
portrayed to a standard I had always assumed
beyond the CD’s abilities.

Improvement in rhythmic articulation was
equally significant. Ritchie Hayward’s “in the
pocket” drumming with Little Feat now became
apparent, as did the rhythmic thrust and funk
of The Meters, Funkadelic, and The Neville
Brothers. The polyrhythms of Olatunji’s master
drummers were easier to identify, though I
found I could not follow more than 4 rhythms
at a time, compared to 7 with the analogue LP.

But it was the improvement in overall
music-making that was the most significant and
the most important: the timing and placement
of notes improved so much that the sense of
musicians playing together finally bloomed.
Sound became organized and revealed musical
sense and meaning. Rhythm, tempo, and the
gradations of volume, dynamic contrast, and
punctuation started to hint at music’s reality
rather than CD’s Cyborg version. The
improvement in portraying the standard
music-making devices common to all music was
significant, leading to deeper aesthetic
experiences. Listening involvement improved
markedly: foot-tapping, knee-bouncing, and
head-bopping now entered the picture, though
mid-bass propulsion lacked that hip-shake
sense of fluid drive that makes rhythm-based
music so physically intoxicating.

Those whose audio philosophy holds that
faithfully extracting every last bit of sonic
detail from a recording is the ideal will love
the CD8x. This philosophy holds that a
component’s ability to reveal the differences
between recordings is not only a test of its
resolution, but also the determiner of its
quality. Though there are practical pitfalls
to this viewpoint (the tendency to value the
sound of the recording without larger
reference to reality and music as the ideal,
and a subsequent tendency to listen to
recordings based only on their sonic merit,)
there is clearly high value in extracting as
much from the recording as possible. Hearing
whole new instruments obscured by lower
resolution players is not to be scoffed at.

I deliberately avoided listening to analogue
LP while auditioning the CD8x, all too aware
that the contrast is fatal. Just when one
starts thinking that CD playback is
unconditionally good, a quick comparison to LP
reveals that the asterisk and parenthesis (for
CD)* still apply. Critical listening to the
CD8x revealed, however, that most of my
quibbles were criticisms of the CD format
itself, rather than the performance of the
player per se. It was hard to ignore the
feeling that the CD8x was at the limits of
what can be achieved with the CD format. A
slightly detached cerebral perspective, a
sense of “terraced dynamics” (as if all music
is performed with the traits of Baroque
music,) and the most obvious tell-tale sign of
ultimate limits in low-signal resolution – the
stepped decay of sounds - are so much a part
of the CD experience that only users of
high-resolution analogue are likely to be
constantly aware of them. The CD8x is a
faithful messenger, and thus liable to be
blamed for shoddy recording studio techniques
and third-rate digital transfers. One has to
admire Cyrus’ courage in adopting this “Damn
the Torpedoes! Full steam ahead!” approach to
CD playback.

So very high praise for the CD8x. Its
combination of ultra-resolution, unexcelled
stage width and depth, articulation of
instrumental lines, top-to-bottom clarity,
tight bass control and punch and realistic
price places it at the limits of what CD can
do. Add the ability to upgrade with the PSX-R
outboard power supply, and to tune its
ultimate music-making abilities with
affordable isolation devices, and one is
facing the maturity of the CD format. No it
doesn’t match the analogue LP in naturalness,
timing, and music-making, but for those whose
experience with CD has lacked the torture of
mine, an effectively isolated CD8x/PSX-R
combination can rank with the ultimate in CD
playback.